


The Mercy of the Masters

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Abuse, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Rape, Rape Recovery, Slave Fenris (Dragon Age), Slavery, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:14:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24420382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: He who asks for the mercy of the mastersWill stand accountable for murder and theftAnd be made example for the slaves of other cities,That they might not have the courage to rise up.The Chant of Light, Canticle of Shartan 9:5The City of Chains was once the heart of the ancient slave trade until a rebellion cast off the chains of the magisters. These days it is chained by the templars and the site of a massive black market of lyrium. And for the slaves of Magister Danarius, it is their new home. Fenris dislikes his master taking them straight into the stronghold of southern templars, but as a slave and bodyguard, he can only follow and keep his master alive. He’s more than capable: there is no perrepatae like Fenris in the Free Marches—or even in Tevinter.But the other abuses that his master puts him through … those are much harder to bear.
Relationships: Danarius/Fenris, Fenris/Hawke (Dragon Age)
Comments: 6
Kudos: 43





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in an alternate universe where, in short, Fenris never escapes Danarius after killing the Fog Warriors. He's been a slave all this time, through the first two acts of _Dragon Age II_ , and he's never actually left Tevinter before. Now Danarius has brought him and a handful of other slaves—yeah, that's the City Elf's father up there in tags, remember Unrest in the Alienage for non-City Elf!Warden playthroughs?—all the way down to Kirkwall.
> 
> This is a dark story. Like really dark. Like there's-an-on-the-page-rape-scene-in-the-next-chapter dark. And while it will eventually get better, it doesn't start out that way, and it's gonna take a bit to get there. **Pay attention to the tags.** I'm not flagging each chapter for its upsetting content because, quite frankly, it's going to be all of them for a while. Danarius is a bad person. He has forty-five seconds of screen time in _Dragon Age II_ and he spends all of them being creepy and predatory.
> 
> P.S. Comment moderation is on because some people get very … fetishistic about slave!Fenris. It might take some time for your comments to show up, but they will, I promise.

Branded on the armor of the Juggernauts is the image of a thin man bent nearly double with a long chain hanging between his legs. Servani, the Chained Man. It is both a crest for one of the oldest guilds in Tevinter and a constellation discovered during the height of the Imperium. And it is also used in the secret tongue of slaves. They scratch images into the wall behind bookcases or underneath tables, hiding them in places where their masters would never see. Servani is thirteen dots connected with straight lines. The language of the slaves is fluid, and even Servani takes on a different meaning in each corner of the Imperium. In Castellum Tenebris, it means their master uses the blood of slaves for his rituals.

Fenris finds himself thinking of Servani as they sail far below the Twins of Kirkwall.

The Twins greet them on the edge of the Waking Sea, hands covering their faces in grief, chained to the black cliffs by their necks. Behind them are nearly a half-dozen other massive bronze statues weeping over the channel. They are emaciated slaves, thighs long and lean underneath the scrap of fabric tied around their waists, withered hands clutching their faces in despair. Their bronze skin has been scoured by centuries of exposure to saltwater until the bronze is scraped green on their bony knees and the backs of their hands. It doesn’t escape his notice that each one is human. Their heads are shaved, their rounded ears visible.

“Once this was known as Emerius,” Danarius recalls, his steely gray eyes drinking in the sight of the bronze slaves’ misery. He is resplendent in enchanted red and gold finery, belted at the waist with dragonskin leather. His staff is volcanic aurum, the round head gripped in golden claws like the fist of a dragon around a treasured orb. It glistens darkly in one hand. “As Emerius, it was the primary supplier of jet stone used to build the Temple of Razikale in Minrathous. There were once a million slaves working the quarries here. Magisters competed for nearly twenty years for the honor of ruling this city, and the house that emerged victorious rose to such import that they patronized the next three archons.” His mouth twists. “Now it is only known for its templars. The Chantry wastes the resources under its heel.”

Fenris listens in silence. He lowers his green eyes from the bronze slaves to the island fortress as it comes into view. (The ship’s captain keeps looking at him, eyes following the lines of his lyrium scars. His armor leaves his arms bare. He ignores it.) The fortress is far below the high, black cliffs of Kirkwall. It bears the distinctive look of dwarven-built slave quarters. All stone, bisected with black gates, narrow gaps in the stone letting in enough sunlight and wind to make a slave weep. The distant profiles of bronze statues crawl after the heels of a regal figure in armor. Not a magister. Her head is crowned in rays of light. Is that … the Prophetess Andraste?

Danarius’s gray eyes linger coldly on the fortress as their ship carries them around to the docks. “That is where they keep their mages,” he explains, the rare gift of an explanation. He’s been more talkative since they left Tevinter. “Left to rot in a prison. How far Kirkwall has fallen since it claimed independence from the Imperium.”

Fenris studies the bronze slaves crawling after the heels of the Maker’s Bride. He supposes there is some sort of meaning to it, but it escapes him. How did Kirkwall claim independence from the Imperium? He doesn’t ask the question. His master’s mood blackens as he scowls at the distant prison.

Tevinter’s borders are always shifting and changing, besieged on all sides by the Qunari and the South. He doesn’t know anything about how the Imperium lost so much of its territory. It has something to do with an uprising provoked by Andraste, but it’s hard to imagine a single army claiming so much from an empire of magisters. He’s overheard Danarius lamenting the loss with his fellow Senators, sighing over their brandy. The way they discuss it, it’s as if the slow collapse of the Imperium just … happened. Like a storm or an earthquake. Forces no one could’ve predicted, taking so much from the magisters.

Fenris looks on at the city rising out of the black cliffs. Their great height makes him—and their ship—seem like ants in comparison. He can see the fingers of the ancient magisters all over the city, in the docks that spill out onto the ocean, in the foundries that choke the slums with yellowed smog, in the high, pristine estates rising far above them. Great stone steps bridge the slums to the estates. The stone crumbles, beaten down and cracked open by the feet of a million slaves and all those since. There is no magic to support their slow decay.

Kirkwall is what Tevinter would look like if someone ripped out all the magic holding it together.

* * *

Fenris finds the city to be deeply unsettling. The air makes his skin prickle uncomfortably, and there are as many templars patrolling the markets as city guards. He recognizes them by their shiny silver breastplates marked by the image of a sword wreathed in flames. Their eyes follow them from behind their helmets, picking them apart, assessing them as threats. Southern templars are not like Tevinter templars. His master told him that before they left Tevinter. These ones have the potential to be dangerous.

There are no other mages out in the streets. No staves, no robes, no displays of magic. There are human and dwarven merchants selling to other humans and dwarves. A handful of elves shop around the stalls for herbs and fabric. One of the dwarven merchants says something to an elven woman that makes her laugh. It’s a sound that strikes him for its strangeness. Then it stops, laughter turning to curiosity and then to fear, the eyes of both the merchant and the woman following them as they pass by. She pays the merchant and ducks out of their way without meeting their eyes. Her fear is familiar, but that she has any coin at all with which to pay the merchant … that is strange.

She is not the only one who quietly escapes their path. Danarius leads his slaves and the laborers hauling up his things through streets that nearly empty out before him. Only the templars and the guards remain, and the guards, peculiarly, look to the templars for what to do. Fenris holds his hand near the handle of his sword, but none of the templars move to intercept him. He isn’t sure if it’s out of fear or respect for his master—or possibly neither. He has the sense that they’re waiting for him to do something as he passes, and when nothing happens, they simply stand there and glower.

Fenris stares at the templar. He is _meant_ to intimidate his master’s enemies, but … he’s never seen a templar openly glare at a magister before.

In Tevinter, such an offense could only be rectified by the templar’s summary execution, and the knight-commander could do nothing to stop it. Here in Kirkwall, the city guards defer to the templars, and the templars glare at magisters as if they have nothing to fear. Bold. Defiant. He can’t take his eyes off them, and when one scowls at _him_ , he barely remembers to glare back.

* * *

The estates remind Fenris of the old parts of Minrathous. Places where the stone underneath his feet is centuries old, composed by long dead dwarves and constructed by long dead slaves. He can see the parts that once belonged to the magisters and all the empty gaps in between. A garden around an empty pedestal that must have once held a statue. To the Ferryman, or Dumat, or Razikale. Clean gaps in the stone edifices where there were once draconic iconographies. He passes underneath a portcullis that has begun to rust from disuse. Nobles have nothing to fear from the old slave quarters below them.

There are two estates that rise high above everything else. One he doesn’t recognize but suspects it belongs to the viscount. The other is a chantry. Blood red colors with a white sunburst fly from its stone towers. Twin statues of bronze magisters flank the grand staircase, but upon closer inspection, it looks as if someone attempted to deface them. A bronze statue of the Maker’s Bride watches over the courtyard. She is armored, her hair crowned in rays of light, a sword in both hands, like the symbol on the templar’s breastplates. It looks newer than the old statues of the defaced magisters above her. The courtyard is filled with templars and sisters in blue robes. He sees no men except for the templars themselves.

Danarius stops them outside an estate with an unfamiliar crest above the door. He directs the laborers and his other five slaves down through the servant’s entrance around the side. Fenris is the only one who walks with him through the front door.

“Master Danarius.” A middle-aged dwarven man with neat blond hair greets them inside the foyer. He has a Kirkwaller’s accent. “You must be exhausted after such a long journey. Your chambers have been prepared for you. See to it that our master is served his tea.” The last is directed to Fenris.

“Prepare it yourself,” Danarius cuts across briskly. “Bring a second cup.”

The dwarven man blinks at the order. He doesn’t argue; he bows and hurries out of the foyer ahead of them.

Fenris follows his master through the estate, and for the first time since they fell under the scrutiny of the templars outside, he removes his hand from the handle of his sword. This estate is so unlike the fortress of Castellum Tenebris. It looks like a private retreat owned by an entirely different man. The oil paintings have unfamiliar subjects; the shelves bear mundane things, books and candles and busts of distinguished, important-looking men.

A cold wind escapes into the corridor when Danarius opens the bedchamber door. Fenris’s skin prickles as he follows him inside. The furniture looks to be imported from Tevinter. A stately bed surrounded with red curtains, a writing desk carved from some rich wood, bookshelves lining the papered walls. He vaguely recognizes one of the landscape paintings as the Silent Plains. Small, rose-like flowers bloom out of the desolate landscape. Felicidus Aria. It used to be popular as a perfume among the altus. A set of glass doors open to a balcony, and near it stands an enormous fireplace, its mouth larger than either of them are tall, cold ash left in the back of its gaping throat. There is no wood nearby. Danarius seems to notice this with a flicker of annoyance.

“Can you feel how thin the Veil is here?” Danarius turns and looks at Fenris, raising his arms expectantly. He begins attending to him, removing the outer layers of his enchanted robes, but his only answer is a questioning look. The Veil is a word he knows but doesn’t understand. Danarius sighs. “Sometimes I forget how little you’re capable of understanding. But, ah, you _can_ feel it.” One gnarled hand grabs him by the forearm and pulls his arm straight with a jerk that makes him jump. He twists his arm, exposing tanned, puckered gooseflesh through the gaps in his armor.

Fenris doesn’t move. His pulse is light and quick, high up in his throat, like a rabbit. Gnarled fingers stroke his lyrium scars until his skin aches like a fresh bruise. He shoves his fingers underneath the fabric with sudden vigor, leaving the path of his scars, massaging his muscles under his armor.

“You haven’t relaxed once since we left home, my little wolf.” Danarius studies him for another moment, then releases him. He returns to his musing. “I suppose it would make sense the Veil would be thinner here than in Lowtown. Nothing but incaensors down in the old slave quarters.”

Fenris pulls his arm back to himself and returns to his previous task. He resists the urge to rub his skin where his master touched it. The fabric hums underneath his fingers as he deftly removes the magister’s crimson mantle. He doesn’t really understand the Veil, except that it’s somehow connected to the Fade, but his mind holds onto the word _Lowtown_. The slums choking underneath the smog is called Lowtown. He gathers the mantle and opens the wardrobe, finding it packed full of unfamiliar clothes.

“Toss them,” Danarius orders. “I have no need for such mundane clothing.”

“Yes, Master.” Fenris pulls out the clothes and drops them on the floor in a pile. They are truly mundane clothing—no lyrium, no magic. He can’t remember if he’s ever seen his master wear unenchanted clothing. There is much about his master that he doesn’t know. His memories before the sarcophagus are completely blank. He learned only recently that Danarius even owned property in the Free Marches. He thought House Danarius only owned property in Tevinter.

Tea arrives as Fenris stores the mantle. The dwarven man enters and leaves again without a word, taking care to bow low to their master, who doesn’t look at him. A silver tray is left on the table beside the bed, perfuming the air with the smell of spices and honey. It makes Fenris’s mouth water. He hasn’t been allowed to eat in at least a day.

Danarius takes a seat on the bed and busies himself with the tea. He pours out two cups, and then removes a thin, glass vial from inside his left sleeve. “There are times when I almost regret the magical resistance your lyrium gives you,” he says conversationally. He removes the wax stopper and tips the vial over one of the cups. A viscous liquid runs out like honey, but the color is wrong. “It can’t be helped but it does occasionally demand that I resort to mundane methods to accomplish what I want. Here. Drink.”

Fenris hesitates. Thick, honey-like ribbons of viscous liquid swirl around the tea, dissolving slowly. He recognizes the poison. It’s been used on him before. “Master—”

“Are you refusing?” Danarius interrupts, narrowing his gray eyes. His words are dangerous.

Fenris is torn between admitting the truth and fulfilling his duties as a slave. He remembers well what happened to him last time he drank the poisoned tea and doesn’t want to relive it, but a slave is not supposed to disobey their master. But he takes too long to answer.

Danarius sets down the tea with a clatter, causing some of the liquid to spill out onto the tray. He sweeps to his feet with the barely contained fury of a magister scorned, fingers deftly working magic. It shimmers across Fenris’s skin. He draws from the Fade, coaxing a small wisp across the Veil. A spirit, no more than a thought, bobs in the air before them. “Find the dwarven man and bring him here,” Danarius orders.

Fenris watches the wisp vanish through the door. His fear of the tea grows until it nearly chokes him, becoming a greater fear of his master. “Master, I’m so—”

“Silence!” Danarius hisses. His voice is low and dangerous, the air around them thick and humming with angry magic. “A perrepatae does not _need_ his tongue. You enjoy yours only at my whim. One more word, and I’ll have the slaves hold you down and _rip it out_.”

Fenris’s mouth snaps shut. He stares at the door and waits for his punishment.

The wait is a short one. Soon the dwarven man returns, looking nervous and slightly confused, the wisp trailing ahead of him. He jumps when Danarius dismisses the wisp with a wave of his hand. “Master? Can I, er—”

Danarius interrupts him, voice as hard and cold as steel. “Fetch the slaves and line them up in here, Lorencz.”

Fenris can do nothing but wait. He knows something terrible is being planned for his punishment, but he’s helpless to do anything about it. _I’m sorry, Master._ He turns the apology over in his mind, wishing some way to communicate it to his master without speaking a word, without angering him further. Danarius doesn’t even look at him. He takes the untouched tea for himself, pours in a small amount of honey, and sits at the writing desk and drinks. The air around him is sharp and cold. It’s terrifying. This is how some of the worst nights of his life have begun.

The dwarf—Lorencz, Danarius called him—returns with the other five slaves. They and Fenris are the only house slaves he brought with him from Tevinter. Three men and two women. Leus. Nicetas. Cyrion. Sabbasa. Iusta. Five curious faces are careful not to look at Fenris, and Fenris is careful not to look directly at them. But they seem to sense right away that he’s in trouble, and somehow that trouble is being passed onto them. Their curiosity turns blank. Five bodies, five statues. Danarius dismisses Lorencz, who is almost too quick in escaping the bedchamber and shutting the door behind him.

Danarius stands and addresses the slaves. “There is a matter about this estate that bears immediate investigation, but Fenris has generously declined to assist me with my research,” he explains coldly. His audience of five is composed and blank, their eyes studiously on the floor, their hands carefully held behind their back. Fenris _feels_ his master’s eyes on him before he even speaks. “My little wolf, tell me who will be replacing you tonight?”

The threat is almost enough to knock the air out of his lungs. Fenris can’t help but directly look at Danarius in shock, then pull his gaze away. He shakes his head too quickly, a jerky little movement. His muscles are so tightly wound up that when he finds his voice to speak, he can feel it all the way down to the junction where his neck meets his shoulders. “I—I’ll do it, Master,” he stammers. “I’m sorry, Master.”

Silence. Fenris can feel his eyes on him, but he doesn’t dare look.

Then: “Leave us.”

Fenris listens to the sound of the slaves leaving the bedchamber. The door opening and closing. Five sets of footsteps vanishing down the hall. The tension in the room eases without them in there, worrying about what sort of punishment they’ll have to take on his behalf, but it’s still so thick he could choke on it. A gnarled hand pushes the poisoned cup of tea into his hands. Fenris tries not to think about the last time as he drains the whole cup all at once. The tea glides down his throat like water, but the poison is slick. It lingers on the back of his tongue.

“We are no longer in Tevinter, but this changes nothing. You would do well to remember who _owns_ you.” Danarius takes the empty cup from him and sets it on the table. He catches Fenris by the jaw and forces him to look directly at him. There is so much anger behind his eyes. “Do you think those templars will save you from me? Do you think they’ll care at all about a useless little slave?”

Fenris tries to look away, but there’s nowhere for him to let his eyes linger. The lyrium scars on his throat and chin ache underneath his master’s grip. “No, Master, I—”

“Southern templars are dangerous, or have you forgotten my warnings?” Danarius hisses. “They drink lyrium like water until it makes them delusional and violent. They’ll take one look at the lyrium under your skin and hold you down until they can peel it out of your body. They’ll dine on the residue in your bone marrow.”

“I …” Fenris opens his mouth to protest, but he’s suddenly aware of the poison working. The strength drains out of him at once. His muscles weaken, and his knees threaten to buckle. He grabs Danarius by the sleeve in an effort to right himself, but then, with horror at what he’s just done, he quickly releases him.

Danarius grabs him by the arm and guides him over to the bed, where he collapses onto the mattress. His greatsword forces his spine to bend uncomfortably, his armor pricks at his skin. His eyelids droop even as he struggles to stay conscious. The mattress tilts underneath him, like the swaying of the ship, when Danarius seats himself beside him on the edge of the bed.

“The Veil is so thin here,” Danarius mutters thoughtfully. “Your unique connection to the Fade could give me valuable insight. Don’t fight it. Pay close attention to your dreams and earn my forgiveness.” His voice drifts farther away from him, and even the hand stroking down the center of his chest feels like it’s touching someone else.

The world falls away. Fenris closes his eyes and sinks into the black abyss.


	2. Chapter 2

_No one makes a sound. They barely breathe._

_Fenris recognizes it as a wine cellar. It’s hot and overcrowded, the air choked out by panicked servants squeezed together down there, he among them. Bodies huddle against him, trembling like leaves. Someone is breathing on the back of his neck. The air smells like sweat and fear. An unfamiliar elven woman clutches his upper arm with her hands, holding him as if she knows him. Her gray hair sticks to her sweaty forehead; the lines around her eyes deepen as she arches her brows in mute terror. Her nostrils flare with each shallow breath pushed through her nose. Her mouth is shut. She doesn’t make a sound. He has the peculiar impulse to cover one of her hands with his own. There are no scars on the back of his hand, and his skin is a lighter color than his natural tone._

_This is someone else’s fear, someone else’s nightmare. Nothing more than a dream._

_All their eyes are focused on a narrow wooden staircase. He knows without seeing that there is a door at the top leading to the estate overhead. These are things his dream-self knows, the man whose nightmare he’s reliving. They are down in the wine cellar because their master took his family and his favorite servants and fled. Now they’re waiting for their death. They don’t know what else to do._

_Something starts on the other side of the door. A crash, a clatter, footsteps stomping down the corridor. It causes the entire huddled mass of elves to cry out in terror and retreat deeper into the shadows of the wine cellar. He pushes the gray-haired woman behind him with a sense of protectiveness that isn’t his own. She starts to protest, then swallows the words down. They wait, ears straining, as the sounds approach the door. Something slams against the door, and the elves cry out again; someone bursts into tears behind him. Someone else covers the crying elf’s mouth with their hand, and the others around him stir, mutely begging for silence._

_Stay silent. Don’t make a sound. Maybe they’ll give up and move on._

_Something slams into the door again. It shudders on its hinges._

_The crying elf lets out a wail not even fingers can silence. “We’re all going to_ die _here!”_

_A hand tightens around Fenris’s bicep. He almost jerks, but he realizes it’s the gray-haired woman. Her eyes hold his intently, communicating something wordlessly to him. Fenris doesn’t understand, but his dream-self, the dreamer whose nightmare he’s reliving, understands, and his heart breaks with sorrow. He mouths the words “I can’t” to her, but she frowns and shakes her head. Her fingers tighten urgently around his bicep._

_Something slams into the door again, this time louder than before, so loud the noise cracks like thunder. Everyone is shocked into silence. They wait and tremble without breathing, listening for the door to splinter as something slams into it again and again. Then with one final hit, the door is flung open; it crashes into the wall with a sound like cannon fire. Terror breaks out among them as bodies fill the staircase. Darkspawn. Fenris knows them, but his dream-self doesn’t. He’s never seen them before, and a sort of bewilderment colors his thoughts. A stench fills the wine cellar: carrion and deep earth and … something else. Something that makes his skin crawl._

_The servants are coiled tense in the shadows behind the casks, waiting to be seen._

_A voice speaks from somewhere outside the cellar. It’s a terrible, guttural voice that none of them can understand, but it brings out an instinct in them that makes them cower in fear. To Fenris, it sounds like orders. He knows there are darkspawn that can speak. He doesn’t understand the words, but he understands the tone. This one is telling the darkspawn to … kill them. Or capture them. To drag them down into the Deep Roads and do whatever nightmarish things to them it is that darkspawn do._

_The darkspawn listen. They prowl around the wine cellar. The ones that look like boulders of mutated flesh make putrid sniffing sounds. Genlocks, but his dream-self doesn’t know the word. Fenris senses that he’s about to break at any moment, fear giving way to pure instinct, but someone else breaks first: “Run!” someone screams behind him, drawing the attention of all the darkspawn prowling the wine cellar. “Run!”_

_Fenris is suddenly pitched forward as the elves heave from behind him at the same moment the darkspawn lunge around the casks. He hits the floorboards, chin and palms stinging, as bare feet thunder around him in a blind rush for the only doorway out of the wine cellar. The darkspawn fall on them. They’re pushed to the ground, teeth and claws ripping apart the men. He tries to push himself back to his feet as one of the more human-looking darkspawn advances on him. Hurlocks, Fenris knows, the ones that look like soldiers but aren’t. His dream-self doesn’t know the word; the word_ monster _burns in his thoughts. It raises its sword above its head, lips rotted away from its teeth in a permanent grimace, and thrusts it down. He rolls out of the way and it strikes the floorboards behind him._

_Then Fenris is on his feet, springing from the floor with adrenaline coursing through his veins, and hurtles himself at the hurlock’s midsection. They hit the floor, the sword falling from its hands. He doesn’t look or linger on the thing underneath him. He pushes himself upright and dashes through the wine cellar, looking around for something. The gray-haired woman, he realizes. He’s looking for her._

_She screams._

_Another hurlock has her by the hair, dragging her up the stairs. She screams and fights and scratches her nails down its armor. The hurlock barely notices. Fenris chases after them, pushing through the heaving bodies of darkspawn and elves, the stench of sweat and blood filling his nose. “Mamae!” He finds his voice for the first time, shouting a word he doesn’t recognize. “Mamae!” Something catches him by the foot. He cannot catch himself fast enough. He lands painfully on the ground, his jaws snapping shut with a lance of white-hot agony shooting through the side of his face. Fenris rolls onto his back to face his attacker, catching sight of the glint of steel just before the hurlock plunges it into his chest—_

* * *

Fenris wakes to the brutal pain of being violated.

He is pure instinct as he fights back. His body has been draped on his stomach over the side of the bed; his feet barely manage to find purchase on the marble floor. He bends up at the waist and blindly thrusts an elbow behind him. A gnarled hand seizes him by the scruff of the neck and forces him face-down onto the mattress, the way an angry master might shove the nose of a misbehaving dog into their mess. He digs his hands into the mattress and tries to push himself up again, but the hand on his neck is as unyielding as iron. The thrusting continues.

“Master,” he begs into the covers, inhaling wool and lint. “Stop, please—”

“Don’t move,” Danarius commands breathlessly.

The fight drains out of him. Fenris feels himself go still as his mind goes blank. He doesn’t think or see. But he feels. He is being slowly crushed underneath the body of his master. His face is forced into the covers, hips almost hauled off the mattress, and his spine between is bent at such an awkward angle that he imagines it will snap. Fingertips dig into the bare dip of flesh near his hip bone. Enchanted robes sweep over his back with every thrust. He feels like he’s being split in two, and at any second, he’s going to break.

His pulse is down low between his legs, hot and angry. He is empty. He is waiting for it to be over.

Danarius seizes him by the hair and drives the heel of his palm into the back of his head, crushing his face into the covers until he can’t breathe. Fenris desperately grabs him by the forearm with one hand, but his pleas are muffled by the blankets. Danarius doesn’t hear—or, if he does, he doesn’t respond. He spills hot and wet inside of him, the intrusion swelling up so thick inside him it threatens to tear him apart. Fenris imagines it like blood, but it’s not. It’s white and viscous, when it cools it’s like egg whites.

Then, slowly, the hand releases the back of his head.

Fenris presses his face against the blankets and fights back the urge to cry. He is empty. He does not feel. But the blankets are damp around his features, wet with sweat and tears. Danarius pulls out of him; it feels like his entrails are being dragged out of him. He leans over Fenris and rests his sweaty forehead on the space between his shoulder blades. He breathes deeply and sighs with contentment. Fenris is far away. He turns his head and stares teary-eyed at the blankets. It’s wrinkled and damp underneath him. He runs his fingers over one wrinkle, smoothing it out. He doesn’t know why he does this. Empty.

“I’ve decided to forgive you, my little wolf.” Danarius rises and leaves him there on the bed. He buckles his belt and straightens his enchanted robes. His footsteps carry him away from the bed as he continues to speak. “I often forget that you don’t know all that I know. You lack the academic understanding of how the lyrium in your skin interacts with the Fade—of course, you couldn’t appreciate how thin the Veil is here.” The careless sloshing of water. Something is being rinsed in a basin. “You _should_ trust your master, but … you’d hardly be the first to fear that which he does not understand.”

Fenris says nothing. He is naked and in agony. He manages to bring his legs up on the bed, but he doesn’t move from where his master left him. Danarius returns to the bed and leans over him. A warm, wet cloth presses against him. He stiffens at the touch, heart lurching into his throat, rabbit-quick. Thick fingers massage his raw, throbbing flesh through the cloth. His master is … cleaning him. His limbs go limp, splayed out on the mattress. It’s almost over.

“There.” Danarius chuckles. “Now you’re not so tense, my wolf.”

* * *

Fenris is still shaking when supper arrives.

Outside, the night sky is visible through the windows. Someone brought in wood and started a fire in the fireplace while he was unconscious. Everything in his master’s bedchamber is warm, glowing red and orange from the mouth of the dwarven-built fireplace, shadows flickering on the papered walls. He tries not to think about who brought in the wood or what they must’ve seen. Someone carefully laid out his armor and underthings on an ornate chest. It’s difficult to imagine Danarius handling his armor with such reverence, but it’s equally difficult to imagine him permitting any slave’s cleaning duties to interrupt him before he was finished. He finds his greatsword leaning against the papered wall between two bookshelves. He leaves it there, untouched. There’s no need for it.

Cyrion arrives with a silver tray that smells of brothy soup and braised meat. Fenris’s mouth waters at the scent. He sits gingerly on the edge of the bed, his anus throbbing like an open wound. It takes all his concentration to keep the sharp pain between his legs from reaching his expression, and that leaves very little willpower to restrain himself from eyeing the silver tray with naked hunger. His stomach is an empty cavern, his body as brittle as a dry leaf. He stares down at his gauntlets and traces the patterns with his eyes.

Danarius watches as Cyrion lays out the meal and pours him a glass of deep red wine. He takes the first drink of wine, and that seems to be the signal for the older slave to take his leave. But as he turns, however, Danarius stops him. “Stay,” he orders. “I need you to scribe for me.”

“Of course, my master.” Cyrion’s tone is carefully detached and formal, his weathered features studiously blank. He moves a candelabra from the mantle to the writing desk, and there he takes his seat. Cyrion is unlike the other slaves. He’s Fereldan, from an alienage in the capitol. Among them, he’s the only slave who knows how to read and write, and therefore he scribes for their master when his apprentice is absent. He dares to look at Fenris with discreet concern from the corner of his eye when Danarius isn’t paying him attention. Fenris doesn’t know why his concern feels like an insult, but it rankles the same. His hands curl into fists on his thighs.

Danarius doesn’t notice. He takes his time in rearranging the dinner spread to his satisfaction. If he senses his slaves’ attention turning to him, waiting on him, then he gives no indication. His time is his own. “Tell me about the dream you experienced,” he commands, words directed to Fenris. And to Cyrion: “Transcribe everything he says.”

“It was a nightmare,” Fenris starts but stops almost immediately.

Cyrion is a dutiful scribe. He has the tough hands and toned arms of a man accustomed to labor, but he handles the quill with practiced ease. The tip scratches glittering black letters into the parchment once he speaks, and when he falls silent, the quill ceases to move. He dips it in the inkpot and waits on him.

Fenris swallows and tries again. He never thought it would be so unnerving to have a slave wait on _him_ , but it rattles him so much that his voice shakes when he resumes speaking. “We were … hiding in a wine cellar,” he explains, and the quill begins to move again, committing his words to black ink. “Our … their master abandoned them. They were his servants. Or perhaps they were his slaves? I don’t know. They didn’t know what else to do, so they hid in the wine cellar.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Danarius says dismissively. He removes the lid to a ceramic bowl and sets it on the silver tray. Steam rises out from underneath in visible curls, bringing with it the heady aroma of meat drippings. Stracciatella: a cloudy soup of shredded eggs, parsley leaves, and grated cheese, swirling around in meaty broth glistening with fat. “Continue. What were you hiding from?”

Fenris pulls his eyes away before he takes the first bite, but the back of his mouth aches as he listens to the sound of slurping. He’s so hungry. “Darkspawn,” he answers. “But we—they—didn’t know what they were.”

“Why do you say that, my wolf?”

“It’s … a feeling. I know what the dreamer knows. He didn’t know what darkspawn were.”

Silence. Fenris can feel his master’s eyes on him, but he doesn’t meet them. His green eyes linger on the writing desk. He watches as the sharp, black tip of the quill transcribes the last of their exchange and then dips into the inkwell. The letters glitter wetly in the candlelight. He wonders how Cyrion knows what to write. Does he transcribe only their words, or does he also write down his pauses, his hesitations, the tone of his voice? How does he mark which words belong to whom?

Danarius takes another sip of wine before he speaks. “This is a feeling you’ve experienced before. This … knowledge granted to you through your dreams.”

It’s not a question, but Fenris still feels compelled to answer. “Yes, Master.”

Fenris has struggled with nightmares for as long as he can remember. At Castellum Tenebris, his nightmares are vivid: pink hands, raped by a house guard; tan hands, dragged before his master and bled; brown hands, weeping over a round belly. Here in Kirkwall, light hands without scars, hiding in the wine cellar. He remembers the hands clearest—although his nightmares haunt his waking thoughts for hours, sometimes days, afterward. His hands are never his own in his nightmares. There are no lyrium scars, growing like vines down his arms, flowering near his nail beds. They always belong to someone else. Just as the nightmares belong to someone else.

Another slave once told him it was “weird.” Her face pinched, nose wrinkled, when she said it. _Weird_. He doesn’t understand it himself. He only knows it has something to do with his lyrium scars.

Danarius is always curious about his nightmares. He understands something they don’t. His study in Castellum Tenebris has heaps of scrolls dedicated to them. It confuses Fenris that he never seems to be particularly interested in what happens _during_ them, and neither is he curious about who he’s dreaming _about._ He picks apart his nightmares in search of something he won’t name and Fenris can’t understand. “And then what happened?”

“The darkspawn broke into the wine cellar,” Fenris continues, and so does the quill. He’s almost unaware of himself watching Cyrion write down everything he says. “They found us—found them—hiding down there. It was chaos. They tried to escape as the darkspawn fell on them. It was a massacre. They didn’t stand a chance, unarmed and driven to despair. A woman was dragged out of the cellar still alive, but I don’t know what they intended to do with her. There was a hurlock. I … I think it killed me.”

“It killed the _dreamer_ ,” Danarius corrects.

Fenris doesn’t answer immediately. He is suddenly gripped by the peculiar, surreal feeling of watching himself from overhead. He pictures himself in his mind’s eye, wounded and trembling underneath his armor, hands clenching and unclenching in his lap. “It killed the dreamer,” Fenris repeats, cheeks burning with shame. He almost can’t bring himself to speak the next words: “That is when I … woke up.”

To pain. To violation.

( _Did that really happen?_ )

“But there is more,” Danarius recalls. His tone light and daring. He sets down the stracciatella, dredges of egg and watery broth settling at the bottom of the bowl. “A word spoken while you were unconscious. ‘Mamae.’ Do you remember that?”

( _It did happen. Less than an hour ago._ )

Fenris trembles underneath his armor so violently his teeth threaten to chatter if he doesn’t clench his jaws. He feels brittle. He is empty. He is glass. It is difficult to think about what happened while he was unconscious, but his thoughts roam over the gaps in his memory and attempt to fill them in anyway. He doesn’t want to think about it. “I … I do, but I don’t know what it means, Master,” he mumbles shamefacedly.

“It’s an elvhen word,” Danarius explains. “It means ‘mother.’”

_Mamae_. Fenris remembers himself screaming the word with his full voice. He remembers truly screaming with his full voice only once: when the sarcophagus carved lyrium into his flesh. It was no dream. Blinding light, and white-hot agony, or perhaps it was the agony that caused the light to imprint across his memory? He doesn’t know. But he’s never screamed like that for a person; not even for his master, no matter the pain or humiliation he put it him through. “There was an elven woman,” he explains uneasily. “She was older than me, and she … seemed to think that I was protecting her. Or that I wanted to.”

“Did you?”

Fenris should’ve expected the question, but he doesn’t know how to answer correctly. His _dream-self_ wanted desperately to keep her safe, but would his master take offense to him showing deference to another, even in his dreams? He only thinks of her as a stranger, a nameless woman clinging to his arm as they waited in the shadows behind the casks. But he also wanted to … His dream-self’s sense of panic and protectiveness colors his thoughts. It’s all muddled in his head. Losing her was like losing his own mother all over again—or what he’s certain it must’ve been like. He can no longer remember her. “The dreamer did,” he finally answers.

Danarius smiles faintly in satisfaction. His answer is the correct one. He addresses Cyrion, not Fenris, when he speaks again: “That is all. Leave us.”

Cyrion sets aside the parchment to dry. He bows before he leaves the bedchamber, but he lingers at the threshold for a second too long. His blue eyes study Fenris with concern. Danarius notices; his lips thin, and the lines in his brow deepen as he frowns. Then Cyrion is gone, closing the door behind him.

Danarius’s mood lightens as he looks at Fenris with approval. “You have done well, my wolf,” he praises him, pushing the bowl of cold dregs into his hands.

Fenris accepts the bowl with shaking hands. His resolve almost breaks under the praise. Salt rises in the back of his throat, in his sinuses; his eyes prickle. He greedily slurps down what’s left of the soup before it can be taken from him. Cold eggs and chicken broth, and it somehow leaves him hungrier than before, but it’s suddenly the most delicious thing he’s ever eaten. “I—I tried, Master,” he croaks, voice trembling, as he wipes his mouth. “I did everything you wanted.”

Danarius’s smile is almost kind. “You did, my wolf.”


End file.
